I’m relaxed and weeding, so I was not ready for what she was about to say.

“Your last piece of writing was not good.”
I offer no response; I just listen.

“Your writing in the past was much better. What’s happened to you?”

Still harder to hear was what came next: “Do you have the creative talent to deliver the kind of writing that gets results for clients? Well, do you?”

Geez, have I slipped that much?

“You know your last direct mail campaign got a forty percent response rate, but you have to increase that number. Can you do that?”

I grab another weed and pull hard because I don’t know how to answer her question. I feel my throat tighten. I’m tired of this daily barrage. I worked until 2 a.m. last night to make a deadline that just kept getting moved up. I’m coming up with creative concepts and writing as fast as I can. I don’t want to argue, but how much more of this can I take?

“And that email you wrote for George Carlin years ago, it broke records for response rates, so you had the talent back then. But do you have the talent now?”

I think to myself: True, I did do that. I miss George Carlin. His piece on “Stuff” still makes me laugh out loud.

I pull some bittersweet out of the bee balm.

I can’t listen to this any longer.

Enough.

I have to stop talking to myself.